Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Journey to Planet Write: Lost and Found

by Lynn Mundell

Bed Is for Reading

Squashed between warm
bodies, I listened to my parents read to me in their bed. Soon, I read to
myself. In public school, we all pored over the Scholastic Book catalogs and
filled in order forms. I would order 10, 20 books. School was very dull. Then
the delivery came, and a high stack of books bound together with a jumbo rubber
band landed on my desk, and I was saved by Amelia Bedelia, that fantastic blockhead.

When I was 9 my teacher
announced a writing contest sponsored by the American Legion. We all wrote
about what it meant to be an American. I was a so-so American, so got third
prize, a small bronze medal hanging from a heavy red, white, and blue ribbon. I
wore it constantly until my older sister asked me to please stop.If you were a writer, you were pretty much a
dignitary. Practically royalty. Who wouldn’t want to be a writer?

Youth Was for Writing

I wrote poetry and newspaper
stories in high school and college, while working a series of weirdo jobs — toy
store clerk, men’s clothing saleswoman, failed florist (I was fired after sending
the funeral arrangement to the baby shower, and vice versa), trailer cleaner, preschool
flunky. A boyfriend asked me what I planned to write about. I told him I wasn’t
sure, and he scoffed, fueling my doubt.

Chico Senior High newspaper staff. Lynn is second from the left, seated.

In the midst of being in big
trouble at my newspaper internship for accidentally deleting the entire issue
of the weekly during production, I was accepted to graduate school. At 20, I
moved East to earn my MFA. More jobs. Hat shop worker. Postcard saleslady. Frank
Conroy shredded my prose, then once gave me a friendly ride to class in his old
station wagon. I wrote at odd hours and went alone into dark places in my head
and wandered out again a little bit stranger and worse for wear each time. I
worked at papers, and one sent me to St. Louis to interview U.S. Poet Laureate
Howard Nemerov, simply because I was the closest thing to a poetry editor they
had. I won a prize at the university. It felt almost as good as the one from
fifth grade.

Throwing in the Towel

In my 20s I tried valiantly
to be what I thought constituted a writer. I taught at a college, and whether due
to circumstances (grammar night class) or myself (uncertain), it wasn’t for me.
I chased literary magazines. The fat, healthy envelope would go off in the mail
with a poem and an SASE, and a thin, pale one would return, sometimes months later.
I stopped writing creatively. I thought my professors’ belief in me must have
been misplaced. I threw myself into work life, married, moved home to
California. On a whim, I took a creative non-fiction class from columnist Adair
Lara, a wonderful teacher. An essay was published in The Sun, then another in The
San Jose Mercury News.The morning I
went to a Merc box on Market Street
and bought 10 copies of the issue with my essay, I broke down and cried.
Somewhere in my now 32-year-old body, the writer lived.

Awakening

Also growing in that body was
a baby. Then another. Nothing had prepared me for just how hard it is to be a
working mother. Years passed in a blur of commuter trains and playgrounds. I
read aloud to my sons in bed. I volunteered at the schools. (My favorite gig
was … the Scholastic Book Fair!) While I
wrote for a lot of people and places, I never wrote for myself. I had given up.

One day my old friend Grant
Faulkner invited me for a drink and asked if I would like to start an online
literary journal with him. I didn’t understand the term “flash fiction” that he
kept using, but I said yes. If I wasn’t a writer anymore, I could be a
publisher. That invitation to start 100 Word Story five years ago was pivotal.
Early on, we didn’t have enough stories for an issue. I sat down, wrote a trio
of Halloween-themed “scairytales” in the
proverbial flash, and was hooked. I interviewed
masters of flash, who sometimes became treasured friends and teachers, and read
thousands of story submissions over the years — seeing what worked and didn’t. Eclecticaaccepted a largely
autobiographical story. Then Flash: The International Short-Short
Story Magazine took another. I got
word over my iPhone en route to a family vacation. Instead of tears this time, I
gave a whoop of joy.

Stay with the Page

With time, I developed an
actual writing life. Before going to sleep or when I awake, I write longhand in
journals. (Bed. Again.) Stories are anywhere from 50 to 1,000 words and may
take up to 30 drafts. After one is about 95 percent done, I type it up and keep
it in my purse or pocket for a while, pulling it out at odd times to reread it
and change it until I feel it is finished. I keep a long list of journals,
alphabetized from A (The Adroit Journal)
to Z (Zyzzyva) and spend a lot of
time trying to find the right place for each piece. (I much prefer the age of
online submissions, although I recently mailed a story in an old school
envelope. Still waiting…) I’m grateful for every publication, heartened by the
dedicated, generous writers, editors, and publishers in today’s literary community.
I still have so much to learn, but I’m not giving up. At 51, I have a lot to
say, fewer years now to say it, and I know what a very long time it can take to
awaken the writer sleeping within.

Rattle of Want

Pomegranate Stories

Follow Me on Networked Blogs

FEAR

Fear freezes creativity. Failure cracks the ice. You can let yourself slip into the cold water or you can grapple for purchase and scream for help until you are once again donning your ice skates and cutting an elegant figure-eight. -Gay Degani

What is Flash Fiction?

Flash fiction is to traditional short stories what lightning is to a storm… Thunder, rain, sleet, wind and lightning are all part of the excitement of a full blown nor’easter or afternoon thunderstorm. The rush of hard rain opens our eyes; its steady drum on the roof soothes us until that first roll of thunder raises our pulse; lightning makes us anticipate and 1-2-3 count. Then rain again and we wait for another loud crack, more electrical fireworks, the clouds to clear, the skies to blue. A good storm is filled with promise, surprise, fear, suspense, relief, joy, and sometimes sadness. So is a good story. -Gay Degani

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
~Shakespeare